Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Listening for only what you want to hear

DAVID KAY: Well, first of all, every analyst ought to be asking his own
questions. We're overlooking the fact that this show is at the cadre of
analysts were writing this were not well-trained themselves. Certainly the
managerial layer has a responsibility. The NIC has that-- the National
Intelligence Council-- that produced the NIE.

They didn't do contrary analysis; they did the lowest common denominator
agreement. I think one thing of the political pressure though that we're
overlooking is after 1995, there was only one element of glue that kept us
able to keep sanctions in place and have any international allies, and that
was Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the presumed weapons of mass
destruction. So it meant that there were two levels and two standards that
were applied.

Any information that showed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was
accepted and reviewed and welcomed with very little scrutiny. Evidence that
didn't fit that pattern had a much higher bar to pass, because if the weapons
went away, if they weren't there, the U.S. had no Iraq policy and no allies
for an Iraq policy. That's a vicious type of pressure.

This is what happens when the intelligence community becomes politicized.
When the future prospects of agents and analysts becomes dependent upon how
their output matches with the desired result then it is inevitable that the
whole process will become corrupt and unreliable. I don't have the link
available, but several years back I read an article in either The Atlantic or
The American Prospect that discussed how the Reagan administration politicized
the analysis wing of the CIA. The Reaganites didn't like it when the analysts
would tell them that the Soviet Union wasn't a big threat. So they put in place
people who would bring the proper perspective to the job.

The result was an intelligence community that was caught off-guard when the
Soviet Union collapsed.

And an intelligence community that didn't see 9/11 coming.

And an intelligence community that vastly over-inflated Saddam Hussein's
capabilities.